June UFO

I am staying on track to finish a UFO each month.  This month I am coming in just under the wire with my UFO.  The good thing is I finished many new projects, that's a lot of fun and the UFO pile doesn't grow.  Here is the Bullseye quilt I started a couple of years ago.  I had a grand vision for the machine quilting, got it half done and realized it looked terrible.  So I spent some time in front of the TV picking out the stitching.  Then I started over with a simple diagonal pattern.  I learned in a couple of machine quilting classes that your quilting should compliment the quilt pattern. So if there are curves, use straight lines for quilting and vice versa.  I highly recommend this pattern for fun, scraps and easy sewing. 

Fun Texas Shops

I'm home from a four day trip to visit my sister in the Dallas area and four days at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  Both trips were so good for my soul.  One of the trips led me to a couple of fabulous quilt shops.

I found some fun shops in the Dallas area with a quick Google search.  I just love the names of the shops too.

The first was the Quilt Asylum and the second was Happiness is Quilting.  I did some major damage at the first shop as my sister felt is was imperative I buy some Cowboy fabrics to make a quilt to commemorate my trip to the great state of Texas.  And I just love the name of the second -- because it's oh so true.  Happiness is quilting!

A Good Read and a Good Listen

It's summer and I love to catch up on my reading during these hot days.  I listen while I sew and love to read during the late afternoons when it's too hot to do anything else.  I go to the coolest part of the house - our bedroom - turn on the fan and curl up with our dog and a good book.  These are my two latest and very highly recommended.

This is my "listen".  And I just loved it.  Fannie Flagg did the recording and her voice is wonderful.  This is a great story about a former Miss Alabama turned real estate agent that spends her time getting ready to "leave".  But all these things keep happening to delay her departure.  It's heart warming and funny.  I've loved every minute of it.

This has been my "read".  It was recommended by someone and I love it too.

It's a year long quest to live according to Oprah -- her show, magazine and website.  The author blogs about it during the year.  It reminded me a little of Julie and Julia, but not too much, just the premise.  I totally enjoyed this and its highly recommended too.

New Baby, New Quilt

I had to throw a baby boy quilt together in a hurry and fell back to one of my favorites for this, Yellow Brick Road.  I bought six fun fat quarters, border, backing and binding at one of my favorite local quilt shops.  This was the finished project finished with some simple diagonal quilting.

The fabrics are very sweet with some animals, frogs and ABC's.  I know there is a very sweet baby boy that will we wrapped in warmth and love by it.

Book Club

Book Club is at my house tonight!  I thought our lovely new furniture would have arrived and we could use our new sitting room for it, but alas, there is a six week delay on the four new chairs.  So, we'll be using the old sectional in the family room -- which is a fabulous piece of furniture.  It's brown leather, made in Italy by some renowned furniture maker and I forgot their name.  This is our book for this month -- Life of Pi by Yann Martel.

The book is very different in a nice way.  The subject matter is certainly new for me.  It's about a sixteen year old boy, Pi, his family and zoo animals emigrating from India to North America in a Japanese cargo ship.  The ship sinks and Pi is adrift on a lifeboat with a hyena, orangutan, zebra and Bengal tiger.    It is truly an adventure.  It's just over 300 pages and has a reader's guide at the end -- perfect for book club discussion. 

English Souveniers

Our daughter, Laurie, returned from her two weeks "across the pond".  She took 8 flights in 14 days and says she doesn't want to see another plane for a long time.  Oh, she forgot she's going to NYC in six weeks!  Hopefully that will be enough time to recover.  Her flights were to LA, Seattle, Paris, Stockholm, Dublin, London, LA and home.  We were so happy to pick her up at the airport with her requested order from In and Out Burger waiting in the truck.  She had a couple of bumps along the way but weathered them fine.  And we know how to get money across the ocean in an emergency when her credit card was canceled (along with 16,000 others) due to them being compromised in a Michael's store skimming operation.

She knows I LOVED the Royal wedding and everything about the new Royal couple.  So these were my treasures from England.

The program is so cool.  It has every detail listed, the music, script, official engagement photo, etc.  The small object in the upper right corner is a thimble with their photo.  The thimble may be a little cheesy but I love it -- and Laurie knew I would.

Now, my husband is a huge history buff and and this place is number two on his list of sites to visit outside of the U.S.  Laurie said it was almost ethereal being there and taking it all in.  They had a fabulous guide that did a great job of explaining the history of the site and all the theories about it.

Beautiful Bibs

This was the sewing project I finished this week.  It was started several months ago, had to get the last couple done.  I have made these bibs for the past few years and I am retiring my newspaper pattern!  In fact, it's already been passed down.  These are for some very special young women for a very special event this weekend.

I added some machine embroidery this year with the help of my husband.  He handles the computer software end of it all.  I made 19 of these!  That's a big chunk of time.  And satin is so unforgiving.  Give my some 100% cotton any day!